Documentum, Not Going Away Without a Fight

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imageAs I fly back from EMC World, I am left pondering the future of EMC in the Content Management space. This is a space that is undergoing an overhaul. There is a surge of innovation which we haven’t seen since the nineties. The cloud is becoming a more important part of the equation for organizations and those vendors that don’t evolve to fit the new demands aren’t going to be relevant in four years.

To be honest, I fully expect only one of the established leaders (EMC, IBM, Oracle, and Open Text) to make it. Microsoft might make it two with their Office365 offering but there is the separate concern that SharePoint will collapse under its own weight after two more releases.

Seemingly aware of all this, last year at EMC World, Rick Devenuti announced during the Momentum keynote a new strategy for Documentum. Based around the concept of the New User, the idea was to support the transition to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) reality hitting many organizations through new clients, new deployment methodologies, and even new architectures.

This year had more of the same. It what was more of a report card than any major news, aside from the Synplicity announcement. So I’m going to give out grades for the execution of the strategy. Here are the ratings:

  • Above Expectations: The information presented exceeded the expectations set a year ago and the realities of the evolving marketplace.
  • Satisfactory: Pretty much on course as per last year. Given the realities of software development, especially for systems as complex as Content Management. This is still a good rating because expectations were set pretty high.
  • Unsatisfactory: A fallback or failure to met expectations. Cut functionality or significantly changed timelines are reasons that this would be awarded.

Keep in mind that even with good scores, determining whether or not any of this is going to be delivered in time to meet the needs of the market is a function of all vendors in the space as a whole. EMC can’t control what the other vendors do over the next year. They can try to shape the discussion of the market but there is no guarantee that they will be successful.

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EMC World 2012: Determining if EMC OnDemand is Right for You

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Doing something bizarre, skipping an Ed Bueche session. Going to listen to Mark Arbour talk about the OnDemand offering. While not true cloud, theoretically it can deliver some of the same benefits to consumers. Will be interesting.

Notes

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EMC World 2012: Jeetu Keynote, Roadmap for Transforming Your World

Here we are at the second big keynote of the Momentum part of the EMC World conference. Jeetu Patel, CSO and CMO, and Rohit Ghai, VP Products. Not sure what to expect beyond an update on how they are executing on the strategy.

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EMC World 2012: Rick Devenuti’s Documentum Keynote

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Now for the big session, the Documentum keynote. I keep hearing promises of big things. I’ll be happy with consistency and advancement of last year’s strategy. I never expect immediate turn-around from any established company. If they are still on track, I’ll be happy.

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EMC World 2012: xCP 2.0–Insider’s View

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Time to hear how the Early Access program is going for xCP 2.0. Kenwood Tsai is going to talk about the program and have several participants, including Erin Riley from Beach Street, speak on their experiences. It is still 6 months from release but I’ve heard positive things so far so I am curious to hear what is being said.

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EMC World 2012: Documentum Architecture

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Here we, as in the whole gang, are at Jeroen van Rotterdam’s session on Documentum Architecture. I have to see this, even if I never implement Documentum again. I am just too curious to not attend, plus Jeroen is a very entertaining speaker.

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Career of an Information Professional, from Developer to CIO

imageI was having lunch with a colleague the other day. As I was describing to him the challenges I’m tackling as the Chief Information Officer over at AIIM, he asked me, “What prepared you for all that?” I gave a generic answer about how my last job prepared me but as I think back, I’m wrong.

Everything worked to prepare me.

You often heard it said that we are the accumulation of our experiences. If I had to distill what it was that prepared me for my current position, there are several things that did so over time.

While this is far from the only career path to CIO, this was my path. For many Information Professionals, it can be their path.

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EMC World 2012: Rules of the Road

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Another year, another EMC World. Big difference this time is that this year it almost didn’t happen.

As you know, I’m now the AIIM CIO. We don’t use Documentum, though we do have an EMC storage array. We aren’t delivery partners with EMC. Jeetu does sit on our board and EMC does sponsor some of our events. So while we do have a relationship with EMC, it isn’t one that would lead to my attending EMC World.

Then a funny thing happened, I wrote a post about how I still felt part of the Documentum Community. Before I knew it, I had swung by the Developer Conference and I was scheduled to speak at this year’s EMC World on A Brave New World for Information Management.

So I’m back, though I never really went away.

We are only a week away so I thought I’d reiterate my ground rules for this, and any, conference. For those that are unfamiliar, I pretty much type notes at every sessions and hit publish at the end of the session, essentially sharing my session notes with you. These rules are very similar to last years Rules (I even cut-and-paste for a draft), but I’ve updated a bit as I do every year.

All “live” posts that follow these rules will start EMC World 2012:. This is to clearly identify them for everyone. If I write a post before/during/after the conference that doesn’t adhere to what I am laying-out here, it won’t have that prefix.

Just a heads-up, my session mix will vary a little this year. I’ll still hit the keynote, roadmap, Ed Bueche’s, and Jeroen van Rotterdam’s sessions. I’m also going to be spending more time on the floor, blogger’s lounge, and some Big Data sessions. You may have noticed, Big Data is exploding out of the marketing niche and starting to be come relevant for all Information Professionals.

Disclaimers

I’m going to be running a basic disclaimer in all my posts. If for some reason I forget to paste it in, this disclaimer applies to all EMC World 2012: prefixed posts and you can be sure I’ll be adding the disclaimer as soon as I notice that it is missing.  This is because I will be writing the posts during/after sessions and I will hear things that I may misconstrue or that talk about future events.

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but may not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of EMC products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.

As indicated, if I learn later that something I posted was incorrect, I will endeavor to correct it, but it may not be immediate.

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What You Need to Know about Cloud-base Content Management, AIIM 2012 Style

A couple months ago, I spoke at the AIIM 2012 Conference on the topic Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Cloud-Based Content Management (But Were Afraid to Ask). It was fun and I’ve been meaning to share the presentation with everyone but there have been two issues:

  1. The presentation is image heavy and even with notes, SlideShare doesn’t really help convey the content.
  2. The video was under wraps because it was under consideration for the free Best of AIIM 2012 virtual event in June.

Lucky for you, my session was deemed not one of the very best and I can share it with you now. I’d be upset if the quality of sessions at the AIIM Conference this hadn’t been so high. Billy Cripe gave a great presentation on Two Types of Collaboration and Ten Requirements for Using Them and that didn’t make the cut, but you can see that online now.

So, complete with the Q&A session, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Cloud-Based Content Management:

If you take anything away from the presentation, remember this:

  • The cloud is big and evolving. If your solution isn’t available today, it may be tomorrow.
  • You face the same issues if you stay at home as you would if you move to the cloud.
  • Creating new Information Islands is the new big trap. Avoid them.

Watch the presentation to learn more details on those takeaways, cloud terminology, and why Darth Vader is in the default image.  I’m also speaking on Moving Content Management to the Cloud: A Practical Perspective at info360 if you are planning to be there in June.

Please feel free to ask questions or add your thoughts in the comments below.

The CIO’s Role in the World of Consumer IT

Hardly a week goes by when I don’t come across an article saying how the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) is going to be diminished or that the IT budget is going to move to other departments.

imageThis just seems nuts. In a world where information is growing exponentially, the expert in helping an organization get value from information is going to be marginalized? As I see it, that is dead wrong.

The CIO of the future is going to have to be agile, knowledgeable, approachable, and working in step with every aspect of the business. From experience I can tell you that each business unit isn’t going to wait for their turn. This means that CIOs are going to actually have quality deputies to help out. This implies growth, not the opposite.

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